Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Hakim | Greatest Hits

As snow pours down into New York, thousands of people remain without power--to say nothing of those who have lost their homes altogether. (The fate of more than one of my co-workers.) So it seems almost criminal to pull down this uber-celebratory disc of polycarbonate plastic to rip for you all this evening. But, then, we do have something to celebrate tonight: The United States seems to be on the verge of slowly--key words "verge" and "slowly"--shifting a bit to the left.

Legalized marijuana in Colorado and Washington. Same-sex marriage in Maryland and Maine and probably Washington? (I've sort of lost track of that.) Tammy Baldwin elected as first openly gay senator in Wisconsin. More women in the house of reps now than ever before. That whole Todd Akin thing shut down by Claire McCaskill in Mizz freakin' Zouri while in Indiana, God's Will intending for Richard Mourdock's political career to get fucked. Finally, President Obama reelected, despite having pissed off just about as many liberals over the last four years as he has conservatives.

Yes, I know that close to half of the voting population voted for that other guy. And that celebrating your gay marriage by getting stoned is not legal in most states--or federally, for that matter. And that Michele Bachmann, a woman who believes that slavery was eradicated by our founding fathers, that getting vaccinated for HPV leads to mental retardation, and that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the U.S. government, actually held her house seat in Minnesota. (Having lived in Minneapolis-St. Paul for six years in the 1990s, I am extremely disappointed with my former state mates.)

But, still. As even conservative poll aggregation enthusiast Dick "I Goofed!" Morris seems to be realizing, the United States is a multi-culture, not a mono-culture. And we sort of showed that, kinda sorta, via last night's elections.

So, in celebration: Could there be anything more life-affirming, more get-you-up-off-your-ass-and-dancin', than Hakim? I found this best-of album at the Nile Deli on Steinway Street a couple of days after Sandy had passed and picked it up to lift my spirits. A few days after that, I offer it to you, for yours.

6 comments:

No-one here in the Middle-east was surprised by Obama's reelection. Actually, quite few here do give a damn about the USA. I heard that the country is now going to witness one of its worst-ever economical tailspins. Even Wall Street journos are predicting the worst is yet to come (unlike the POTUS' own victory speech where he claimed that the "Best is to come").

In another similar vein, I wrote a beat-poem last night for this occasion, dedicated to a girlfriend who lives in Chicago, Illinois. Here's it:

The Anomaly of The United States of America: Oh-Bummer! Obama won!A Beat Poem.

Dear, Obama:You won nothing and has now, the best seat in an anomalyCalled the United States of America; this union;This place of malfunction in unisonGiven a time to develop into fixed fictional mayhemAn appearance at the end of the world of stagnant idealismA creation of European madnessA dictatorship felt in safety of unaccountable schemesLike a dead dog full of maggotsAfter its masters left it more than half a millennia agoProclaiming freedom by taking it from othersA country made on a roster of statistics and experimentsWith only freedom taken away as the catalystUseless minds, with paradigmal choicesElectoral citizenships of the keypaded doom clucksConspiraled war tacticians on terror like a dick in the robin eyeDiseased prohibitorial problematics with the federal recognitionSlow progress stale as a dreamt idea called ‘The Dream’A struggle to build burdens and debts instead of lifeAnd anthems sung for deities bred with force and powerFlags made out of symbolism for the DevilCo-tested in old manuscripts revealed in revelationsA country writhed in sodomy and sex like a bouncing ballAnd mega-boards and giant TVs distributing consumee pathologiesGoing from analog to digital lost in the dialogueThe modern-day Gog-a-MagogWhere words are used as truncheons in lieu of a massacre warAppalling speeches ululatory killer machinesWading through the fat, fickle-minds of millions’ dreamsFed like parasites on diets full of toxics and teaseBeneficial chaos for the money-making idiot idolatorsU.S.e-lessly nauseating with required capabilitiesOf the fool, hero, beach-bodied lover, and the badass whoreShitlessly boring like their charismatic president puppetsSuckling chemicals independent like air in an assholeThe message says on the bottle ‘Live and Let Die’Statism, anarcho-capitalism, presidentialism. You-name-it-ismThe type they throw your way you fix in that holeIdiolised filth continuously reposedRaces, faces, places, ... Sit and do nothing: There you goBecause you’re Big on their confusion and it hurts them to be youAmerivolutionary bastards with their inexcusable crimesImproving this piece of old shit picking it back to lifeThe game unnerving for these electing AmoronsFault-filled peasants, yokels, rubes, hicks and horny bucolesPolitishitians kill their speech for the win, oh yeahFor the winner is acting inside the most valuable stagePeace is violent and violence is peace they adhereMass-class-holian en-mass riots will soon appearOh, the plotholes, the ramified people of ol’Bailey boobahRehearsed in super-pooper-computer like a film comicDirty tricks and sacrificial assassinations for the public galoreSecurazy safe-sacks and cops’ asses playing courtChristian zealotry and the Judaical damnationTopple this, top that, one day-more-crazy every damn dayCosseting to schizophreniac Dr. brain-wash Ron PaulThe philosophers’ ring shoved in communitarian, secularity statesWho’s going to take charge? Of what, I should say?This Corupporation? Those English kings?Rockefellers, Morgans, the megalocraciesRulers of ideologies dead from times RomanAll for one common purpose of rebuilding BabylonOr, so they want you to believe and conceiveOh, sheeple fuck off! You nefarious human filthYou oral fixations and première works of doomVeterans of the United States Americans paying in their livesThe Living Checks, Security-Numbered factorialsMade Gods of the Already-Made dainty fanfareExhausted, yellowing, frayed ray-caked mannequinsPsychotic, insulated, animotional, dirty nobodiesSocietal strata-fucked high-minded useless street spendersMiracle dildos conferring in the human-billfolds of cock and cashEntertainmentalists smoking their paradise to ashen cindersTeutonic mad-hats of the old tantrums headless, faceless, and averse

Who could blame you, Blamericanusholes?You look good only in shit-brown tanHiding there in your shit-choked shelters of magical bauds and bytesYeast-infested FaceBook is at the helm nowTell-tales and signs of how the ground no longer loves you allOneiric cataclysm of contextual retweets, of tweeple poosVisionaries of hung journeys Kerouacian wikidiotsFiltering sunlights through beeping ‘Beam me’s of protocol mallsTiptoeing in asphyxiational reap rape and sexual wanderlustLicking your lips to hairgina views of shaved and paved perversionsYou’re drunk with power and hormonally-fucked so to speakYour ideopathos makes your non-existent minds weakBeauty? Boastful foul mouths of the ghost-bellowed brainsCancerous prima facie’s paying in the doll-ar dazzle duesYou are the politicians’ paradises and preachers’ hellsHymnified bullshit of the Now Salvation of your illsThe earth will bear you no moreSuperman is dead, clinching his jaw so tightFar from righteous he was the snake oil of your foilAnd gently, soon, you’re going to fallLike a petal’d wedding mold falling smelling of deathThe earth will be your chamber’s execution hallThe sun has whispered its secrets old and youngSpitting you soon some of its breathOh, devious skies come and comet-spew your tongueA nuance on this dirt is camera’d in doom at lastSoon, the U.S. will get its ass handed to it fastLet’s roll the film, now: Hollywood is good

This sounds great! It may replace Dancing in the Streets, the current song to reflect my post-election mood.I was very happy with the election results, Michelle Bachman aside. I got nearly everything I wanted. It was better than Christmas.